


Walls Torn Down

by tollofthebells



Series: Aurelia Hawke [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-03 19:50:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16332368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tollofthebells/pseuds/tollofthebells
Summary: A compilation of tumblr ficlets and a companion piece to All of My Walls. Most (but not all) stories take place following the events of DA2.





	1. Habitat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from OCtober 2018 day 3: habitat. Originally posted to [tumblr](https://bitchesofostwick.tumblr.com/post/178698894043/october-day-3-habitat-aurelia-hawke-lowtown).

Lowtown absolutely reeks. Stray too far to the docks, and everything smells of rotting fish, of the rancid body odor seeping from fisherman more ghastly than the stock they’re trying to sell and sailors who hadn’t seen a bath of fresh water in months. Stray too far  _ away _ from the docks, and it all smells of stale ale and sewage and if you’re really lucky, piss.   
  
But to Hawke, it’s home. Even after the Amell name is once more in good graces and she can walk the Vicount’s Way without risking spit on her boots and her mother all but flees to the grand old estate of her childhood, even after Bethany is gone and  _ Gamlen _ is the last sorry excuse for family she has left in the old neighborhood, Hawke still spends most of her time in Lowtown.    
  
In Hightown, she has to risk running into Fenris and remember whether at that very moment they’re supposed to be fighting or playing nice, and  _ Maker _ , she never seems to guess right. But in Lowtown, Varric and Isabela are just a stone’s throw away, always ready for her, always waiting with mischievous grins and mugs of room-temperature beer.   
  
In Hightown, every job comes from Aveline in the Keep, or worse, from the Viscount himself, or  _ worse _ , from the sisters in the Chantry. Every adventure—she could scarcely call them that, now—comes from the top down to her, everyone always speaks down to her, and her every inquiry for more information or help is answered with a closed door or a Good afternoon, Serah or a jewel-ringed finger pointing her toward the Gallows. In Lowtown, an adventure is just down the sewer ladders to Darktown. Good information is just a raised skirt and two broken fingers away.   
  
In Hightown, she’s second-rate. Inferior. An outsider. An old name with new money, a biting insult whispered from behind lace gloves in vine-covered corridors.    
  
In Lowtown, she’s queen.


	2. Birthday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from OCtober 2018 day 4: birthday. Originally posted on [tumblr](https://bitchesofostwick.tumblr.com/post/178735380673/october-day-4-birthday-takes-place).

They’d been on the run for three weeks now—three weeks traveling west of Kirkwall, west along the shoreline of the Free Marches. _We may not even be in the Free Marches anymore_ , she thinks as she trudges along rocks and sand, but she’s never been anywhere but Ferelden and Kirkwall and wouldn’t know Nevarran soil if it hit her in the face. _Fenris would know_ , she notes, not because she’s sure he’s been there but because Fenris just seemed to know _everything_. But Fenris, that morning, had been nowhere to be found, his empty bedroll already cold by the time she roused. It was not unlike him to wake before her since they’d abandoned Kirkwall, but it was very unlike him to wake before her when they’d shared a copious amount of wine the night before.   
  
_“A birthday toast,” she announced. They brought little with them when they left Kirkwall, only a couple of her valuables, really, and a couple bottles of vintage from Fenris’ mansion,_ for emergencies _, he’d maintained. By some grace of the Maker, they’d yet to run into an emergency in their travels, but a quiet night on the beach of the outskirts of a remote fishing village, the first place either of them really felt safe since leaving Kirkwall, was reason enough to uncork one._   
  
_“It’s not my birthday,” he replied bluntly, lifting the bottle to take a sip before she intercepted it and shoved him into the sand._   
  
_“It’s_ my _birthday, genius,” she snapped, tipping the bottle to her lips for a lengthy drink._   
  
_“Today?” A quick brush over his clothes was enough to get the sand off, but he scowled at her nonetheless._   
  
_She shook her head, wiping droplets of red from her lips. “Tomorrow.”_   
  
_“Hm.” He pulled the wine from her hands without asking, earning himself another push into the sand. “I suppose you’re looking for a gift, then.”_   
  
_She grinned. “You seem to be fresh out of things to give,” she said slyly, looking him over with those eyes. “But I might be able to accept some…other…sort of gift, instead.”_   
  
_Then it was his turn to grin. A long draw from the bottle of wine_ — _now nearing empty_ — _was enough for him. “Maybe I can think of something,” he said, leaning into her._   
  
She’s only about a mile from their camp when he finds her.   
  
“Thank you, Hawke,” he grumbles, and she can hear last night’s wine in his voice, “for waiting for me.”   
  
She shrugs, keeping a steady pace. “I knew you’d catch up.”   
  
“Did you?” he sighs. “I thought maybe you were trying to lose me.”   
  
“Fenris, if I—”   
  
“Oh, I know,” he says. “If you didn’t want to be found, then I wouldn’t have been able to find you.”   
  
She blushes. For all their bickering, for all their back-and-forth banter and flirting, he really does know her. “Yes, well,” she says, and they trudge on. “Where were you, anyway?”   
  
“Getting you your birthday gift,” he replies, with a tone that suggests he’s been inconvenienced, but she knows him, too. With Fenris, there is no giving unless he means it.   
  
She stops dead in the sand. “What? No, I don’t want a gift, you already—we already—”   
  
She’s silenced by a small bunch of ocean lilies shoved into her face. They’re beautiful, she’d seen them dotting the shoreline for days now, a pale yellow that stands out against the rocky gray, and now he’s giving them to her. She has no answer, only a hot flush as she accepts them quietly.   
  
She loves him.   
  
“I hate you,” she whispers finally, and he grins.   
  
“I hate you too, Hawke,” he says, trying and failing to downplay the smug satisfaction in his voice. “Now get walking. Before I take it back.” 


	3. Palette

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from OCtober 2018 day 7: palette. Originally posted to [tumblr](https://bitchesofostwick.tumblr.com/post/178835891368/october-day-7-palette-not-palette-in-a-literal).

“Reckless of you, Hawke,” Fenris tuts, dipping his thumb into the elfroot paste he’s made for her. It’s not enough, _not as good as the mage could do_ , he has to admit, but it’s the best they can muster on the run like this. “Hold still.” He spreads the paste over her wound, a raw cut just above her brow, the green mixture like paint on her ivory skin.

“It wasn’t _reckless_ ,” she counters, squirming on the ground below him. “Any templar is a threat at this point. My name— _our names_ —are on everyone’s list, we can’t be too careful—”

“Hold still,” he repeats, ignoring her argument. “Too careful” isn’t quite the phrase he’d use to describe the scuffle she’s gotten herself into, especially when the aftermath would be drawn onto her face for days to come.

The cut is the worst wound, yes, but she’s far from well off. Her eye had swollen quite a bit now, black circles around ice blue, and the _bruise_ might be the worst. Deep purple, dark as night and swirled with sickly yellow—like the haunting gold of the Gallows statues—ran from her hairline to her lip, and _oh of_ course _, she’s a cut there as well_ , another bright red trickle over pale rose.

“All done,” he says quietly, adding a last smudge of green upon her lip and upward, just below the little freckles on her cheekbones. He adores her freckles—though he’s never told her so—light and small enough to appear as a dusting of charcoal, a smudge of ash on porcelain, should one not know they’re there, but they’re dark enough to bother her, to call for a streak of bright crimson, red as corrupting lyrium, across her pale face. _If it makes you happy_ , he always mutters to her sarcastically as she paints it on religiously each morning, although deep down, _yes_ , if it should make her happy, _let her_.

“How do I look, ser?” she asks, and it takes him a moment to hear the tease in her voice, the rare hint of laughter behind a lying smile, and he surveys her face as his duty commands. He can’t help but snort at her; she’s a sorry mix of blood and bruises and elfroot and red and purple and yellow and green and black and blue and every color under the sun and _oh, she’s a mess_.

“Beautiful,” he says, with a shrug. He means it.


	4. Dinnertime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place before the events of All of My Walls.  
> Prompt via OCtober day 9: dinnertime. Originally posted to [tumblr](https://bitchesofostwick.tumblr.com/post/178891729003/october-day-9-dinnertime-aurelia-hawke-is-it).

“Is it ready yet?” Isabela asks from the floor beside Aurelia. They’re lying side by side in Merrill’s living room, an uncommon spot to find the pair, but Gamlen’s at home for the night instead of the Blooming Rose ( _for once in his life_ , Aurelia thinks), and Corff still hasn’t quite forgiven the two for bringing down a chandelier from the ceiling the weekend before.

“Are you sure that was us?” Isabela had asked him the next night when he promptly turned them away. “I certainly can’t _remember_ it happening.”

“Neither can I,” agreed Aurelia, hiding a grin. They both knew that hardly meant it didn’t happen; rather, their lack of memory was more of an indication that they did, in fact, somehow bring down Corff’s candle fixture.

“Out,” he’d hissed at them, shooing them toward the door. “And don’t come back until you plan on paying for that!”

With Gamlen’s home out of the question, Merrill, with open arms— _Maker bless her_ —welcomed them into her modest apartment instead, happy for the company. “As long as you don’t knock over my candles,” she’d stipulated.

“If you’re talking about those _ruffians_ tearing down the chandelier at the bar, that wasn’t us, kitten,” huffed Isabela, making herself at home immediately by flopping down on the floor of the living room.

“You ran to my house in the middle of the night and woke me up to say you almost burned the Hanged Man to the ground.”

“Did we?” asked Isabela innocently.

“Guess it was us,” said Aurelia with a shrug, pulling a half-full bottle of Antivan brandy from her bag.

“You were excited about it,” Merrill added.

"Definitely us,” whispered Isabela, taking the bottle.

An hour later, they’re lying in the same spot on the floor, legs propped up on Merrill’s sofa (sofa being a generous term; it’s more of a bench with a few cushions), passing the bottle between them as Merrill cooks a small roast for the three of them.

“It’s nearly ready,” she says, coming back from the kitchen to sit cross-legged beside them on the floor.

Isabela immediately tugs her down to lie on the carpet. “More fun down here,” she says, pushing the brandy into her hands.

“You’ll hate it,” Aurelia says encouragingly when Merrill frowns. She tries it anyway, though, sputtering nearly as soon as the liquid reaches her lips, and Isabela and Aurelia giggle.

“I have no idea how you drink that,” Merrill says, choking back a cough.

“You get used to it,” shrugs Aurelia.

“You know what I could get used to?” Isabela asks, her mischievous tone prompting an eye roll from Aurelia. Merrill has disappeared once more into the kitchen declaring she needs to check on dinner; the two of them both know she’s really gone to rinse her mouth with water.

“What?”

“Looking at that handsome elf boy we’ve recruited.”

Aurelia glares at her. “‘Recruited’ is a strong word,” she mutters. “More like we helped him out once and now he wants to tag along here and there.”

“Oh please,” Isabela groans. “Don’t act like you don’t absolutely have the hots for him. I see right though all your fighting; you act like you can’t stand him but you really just want to get laid.”

Aurelia tips the bottle upside-down right over Isabela’s face, not for long, just enough to splash her nose. “Maybe,” she agrees.

“It’s ready,” Merrill announces, poking her head into the living room just in time to see Isabela take the bottle of brandy and dump the entire remaining contents (admittedly only a few sips) into Aurelia’s hair.

“Great!” Isabela says, springing for the kitchen and leaving Aurelia behind with wet hair and an empty bottle.

“Great,” Aurelia repeats, wiping her face with her sleeve.


	5. Haircut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during the events of All of My Walls (chapter 3).  
> Prompt from OCtober 2018 day 11: haircut. Originally posted to [tumblr](https://bitchesofostwick.tumblr.com/post/178960215093/october-day-11-haircut-ok-so-this-is-already).

Her mother has been dead for only two days when Aurelia crawls out of their estate— _her_ estate now, hers alone, empty but for their material goods, her mother’s possessions that sicken her just to look at, and for Bodahn, and Sandal, and her own broken and barely present soul—and walks out into the cold air of an early winter’s night— _is it night or early morning?_ She doesn’t know anymore. She’s barely dressed in her sleep-deprived state; she could be a common thief on the streets for all her neighbors knew, clad only in the leather pants she’d worn since treading into Darktown two days earlier and a white tunic just half-tucked into her waistband, boots barely tied, dagger belt clinging to her hips with only one of her usual two knives present. Her red paint is smudged over her unwashed face and yet it’s hardly noticeable compared to her bloodshot eyes, sunken and surrounded by dark sleepless circles.

But her hair, by far, is the worst. Undone from her usual single braid, tangled, dirty, still sticky with dried blood in some spots, and _Mother would faint if she could see it like this_ , if she weren’t _dead_. Bethany was the pretty one, Carver strong, but Aurelia had her mother’s hair, the long black Amell locks Leandra had so long coveted, to the point that when hers grayed, she _longed_ for Aurelia’s, begged her to let brush it and twist it into elegant knots and _why can’t you just wear it_ nicely _, Aurelia?_

But _Maker damn her_ if she ever gave her mother the satisfaction of seeing her hair in a crown braid, an Orlesian twist, any bloody style but the single straight Fereldan braid she knew from home, or worse— _better_ —in no style at all, worn long and down and free to tangle and fray in all of her travels in and around the city. Leandra had loathed that the most; Aurelia lived for it.

And yet now, hair down, long, tangled, she feels nothing but emptiness, _nausea_ , panic, nothingness as she makes her way, barely feeling her feet move beneath her, down through Hightown, down the stairs through Lowtown, into the Hanged Man.

 _Still night_ , she thinks; there’s plenty of buzz about the tavern still and at least in Lowtown she doesn’t look like the walking dead, she looks like anyone else, but Isabela’s eyes still widen when she sees her. Aurelia’s only grateful Varric isn’t there as well, because they’ve seen her like this once before, and now a second time for Isabela, and she hoped but doubted her prayers didn’t fall on deaf ears when she asked the Maker, _please, let this be the last_.

 “Hawke, what are you—” Isabela begins, but she falls silent when Aurelia pulls her dagger from her belt. Silent, but not afraid.

 She runs one hand through her long hair—the hair her mother’s skeletal fingers had grasped at as she took her dying breaths on the filthy floors of Darktown, the hair Fenris’s hands had raked through not once but _twice_ when he’d kissed her and left her—runs it through the strands one last time, one final time. The other presses the handle of her dagger into Isabela’s palm, and she’s not asking, she’d _demanding_.

 “Cut it off.”


	6. Beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from OCtober day 18: beach. Originally posted to [tumblr](https://bitchesofostwick.tumblr.com/post/179153161408/october-day-17-beach-aurelia-hawke-she-has-never).

She has never, not once in her life, learned how to swim. It’s one secret of hers that _no one_ knows, not Varric, not Fenris, not even Isabela, a bloody _pirate_ who herself could probably swim from Kirkwall to Ferelden if it pleased her—it’s a secret she would take straight to her grave. Her watery grave, if need be.

They’d been running for over a month now, staying by the coast all the way through Nevarra, _maybe one day we’ll reach Orlais_ —always around the sea, never through it; no ship would take them as passengers save for Isabela’s, but they’d parted ways long ago, and Aurelia could never give her friend such a burden as herself.

Besides, she’s no stranger to running. Not with an apostate father, later an apostate sister. Not with a price constantly on her head, suspicious whispers following her like a shadow in the setting sun. The few years she’d spent as Kirkwall’s Champion had been a brief reprieve, an unfamiliar, dare she say an _unwelcome_ change, from her former lifestyle. Toward the end, she wished— _prayed_ —for some semblance of normalcy, a return to what she _knew_. Anders delivered. Fenris stayed at her side.

 And oh, when it came time to run, they _ran_.

 But living on the run is tiring. What little food they’d salvaged from the city disappeared weeks ago. They’ve survived on hunting ever since. Or rather, their attempts at hunting.

“We should retreat further inland,” Fenris tells her often. “Better hunting there. Better food.”

“A better way to get _lost_ , you mean.”

“Not if we stay on the road.”

“If we stay on a road, we’ll be arrested.”

They have this conversation every couple days, and every couple days, Aurelia thinks of some reason to stay on the coast. _We can’t get lost if we just follow the shore_ , first, and then _look, there’s a small fishing village here, we can buy some food_. It doesn’t last. Fenris grows irritable—they don’t have enough money to keep buying food every time they stop in a village; she knows it as well as he does.

“There’s a little sandbar further out,” she mentions when his grumbling gets to be too much for even her to bear. “There’ll be clams, mussels. I’ll—”

“Good, I’ll set up camp, you can dig for clams.”

Aurelia frowns. “No, _I’ll_ set up—”

But Fenris had already taken both of their packs and started up the sand dunes in search of dry land. _Fine_ , she thinks. _Fine._ She can see the sandbar from the shore; it is, in theory, just a quick swim away. _How hard can swimming be?_ she wonders. So she unbuckles her dagger belt, unbuttons her jacket, peels off her shirt and her boots and her socks until she’s stripped down to nothing but her smalls and her trousers.

C _old_ , she thinks when she dips her toes in the water. _Wet_. The sun has set already; the salty spray of the sea sends goosebumps all over her bare skin. Her heart races, _it’s just_ water _, Aurelia_ , she thinks, and she steps in further, and further, inch by inch, until she’s up to her knees. And she stops. And she stares. The sandbar that seemed so close just moments before looks miles away now.

“Well,” she whispers to herself, hardly hearing her own words as the waves crashed around her. “The tide will be going out soon.”

* * *

It’s dark when Fenris finds her, lying in the sand, still barely dressed, arms crossed behind her head and looking up at the stars. Wordlessly, he sits beside her, and for a while, they say nothing. They sit, they listen to the waves.

“Hawke,” he says finally.

“Hmm?”

“I set up camp.”

She forces a smile. “That’s great.”

It’s silent again for a moment, but it’s coming. She knows it’s coming.

“Hawke.”

“Yeah?” she squeaks.

“Where is our dinner?”

With one hand, and not bothering to sit up from where she lies in the sand, she points across the water to the little sandbar. The tide is still to high. She hasn’t budged.

“Hawke,” he repeats, and he doesn’t wait for an answer this time, only figuring it out slowly, out loud. “Can you not swim?”

She doesn’t make eye contact with him, just downplays the truth, shakes her head, shrugs, shakes her head again.

“Hawke,” he sighs, a _fourth_ time, and he bends into the sand to lean over her, looking her in the eye, _close_ , so that their noses are almost touching, and he kisses her, soft, sweet, slow, the kind of kiss she rarely receives from him and _never_ expects from him. She closes her eyes, lets the sounds of the ocean take her, and when it’s over—and it’s over far too quickly—she opens them again to find him looking back at her.

“You’re insufferable,” he whispers, and with a final sigh, he stands, strips down to his pants, and makes his way to the water.

 


	7. Formal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from OCtober 2018 day 20: formal. Originally posted to [tumblr](https://bitchesofostwick.tumblr.com/post/179259878498/october-day-20-formal-aurelia-hawke-i-dont).

“I don’t understand you sometimes.”

“So you’ve told me,” Aurelia sighs, scrubbing the last of the red paint from her nose and climbing out from the bathtub, “ten times in the past hour, probably.”

Fenris only raises an eyebrow at her, already clean and dressed well before she is. As always.  _Ten times_ , she thinks,  _and he’ll say it ten more._ She dries her body quickly, only stopping to eye the scars on her legs she’d acquired from a bandit attack passing over the Nevarran border.  _Healing fast. Good._ When she reaches for her gown, he’s already holding it out to her, and she narrows her eyes at him suspiciously in return.

“For one,” he begins as she pulls the swishing fabric over her head, and  _oh, of course he has a speech prepared_ , “you hate dresses.” She smooths it out, adjusts the neckline, glances in the mirror– _not horrible_ –and bends over slightly before him, baring the skin of her back, pale as porcelain in contrast to the red silks draping from her shoulders. She doesn’t have to ask. In seconds, she can feel his nimble fingers– _nearly too nimble for a warrior_ –get to work on the numerous tiny hooks lining the back of the gown in a deep “V,” starting from the small of her back, one by one, carefully. He doesn’t speak again until the last hook is buttoned between her shoulder blades. “And then there’s the fact that you, a good Maker-fearing Fereldan, absolutely loathe Orlais.”

She smirks, twirling around, letting her skirts swing playfully as she faces him. “That’s  _why_  I want to go to this.  _Because_ I hate Orlais.” She turns again, this time to the mirror. Her hair has grown a bit since she’d cut it; it’s long enough now at least for her to twist two little braids into it, running just above her ears. It’s pretty.  _Mother would have like these_. She adds the finishing touches, clipping the braids back thoughtfully. “And what would be funnier than a Fereldan and an elf crashing an Orlesian party?”

“And that’s the other thing,” he grumbles. “You’ve spent  _months_ dragging us as far away from anything remotely civilized as possible. And now, suddenly, you want to go to an Orlesian party?”

“It’s  _Orlais_ ,” she insists. “We’re far enough from Kirkwall now that people won’t know you. Maybe me, but not you. Besides, everyone will be wearing a mask.” When she reaches for the pot of rouge beside the bath, he grabs her wrist, pulls her toward him,  _he’s serious_.

“A mask will not hide  _these_ ,” he argues, rolling his eyes and pulling back his sleeves to show her his lyrium tattoos, as though somehow she’d forgotten. 

_Oh Fenris_ , she thinks, her stomach turning. She’s been insensitive, forgetful, and she curses herself for it.  _Oh no_.

“Or  _these_.” He raises both arms now, touches a finger to each ear, but she’s against him in a second, pulling his hands to her, looking at him eye to eye, ice blue on green.

“Hey,” she murmurs when he breaks her gaze, downplaying it,  _as always_. “Look at me.” He does. “If you’re worried, really worried…if this makes you uncomfortable, we are  _not_  going. Okay?”

He shakes his head. “Hawke,” he says, and she can feel the skin on his cheeks flush when she pulls him in to kiss him, once on each ear, lightly. “Aurelia,” he whispers. “I’m not worried if you’re not worried.”

She purses her lips at him. “Are you sure?”

He nods.

“Do you promise?”

He nods again. “I’m not worried,” he repeats. “I just want you to remember that if we walk in there–you, with  _me_ –we might cause a bit of a scandal. But if that’s fine with you–”

She steps back from him,  _proceed with caution_ , she thinks–she knows him too well– and she takes his hand, kisses his knuckles gently, lets go, cracks her own.

“Haven’t you heard?” she asks, lips turning up in a sly smile. “I love a good scandal.”


	8. Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from OCtober 2018 day 25: family. Originally posted to [tumblr](https://bitchesofostwick.tumblr.com/post/179437695058/october-day-25-family-aurelia-hawke-have-you).

“Have you heard from Bethany at all?” Fenris asks her one morning, and the gold-rimmed teacup Aurelia holds drops to its saucer with a _clatter_.

They’ve been lingering in Val Royeax for the past two weeks; she _hates_ it, everything is too bright and too nasally and too breakable and it all reeks of floral perfumes and overpriced pipe tobacco and the _people_. The people are the worst. All clad in silks and velvets and laces and donning ridiculous hats and masks and always covering their mouths before they speak. And yet, at the end of the day, Aurelia has to thank them–after all, they’re the first people she and Fenris have come across in their travels with their heads far enough up their asses that they don’t recognize them, even as they’ve been staying in their fancy rotten overpriced inn for _two weeks_ now.

“I haven’t,” she murmurs, collecting herself, pushing thoughts of her sister aside, picking her teacup back up again. _We’re getting good at this_ , she thinks, sipping the tea–”hibiscus-embrium-something,” _like it matters, tastes like piss anyway —_pinky finger out, eyes downcast. _We’ll be full-fledged Orlesians by the time we’re done here_.

Admittedly, it’s Aurelia who has to _try_ to blend in; she might be physically better equipped to be out and about in Val Royeaux but given the opportunity, Fenris is a sight to behold on Orlesian soil. Any misgivings a local could think up upon seeing the two of them are instantly quieted with only a few words murmured in practiced Orlesian, diplomatic greetings and murmurs she could never hope to string together. His poise and elegance in the face of nobility and elitism are enough to quell suspicion not only over his appearance but over every possible way Aurelia might accidentally blow up their cover, accidentally insult a local, _purposely_ insult a local, and _well, I’ve found many ways._

“You must be worried about her,” he adds quietly. It’s not like him to pester her when she’s upset, _not that I’m upset_ , so when he does, she’s guarded.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” she mutters into her tea. It’s growing cold and she hates the taste, but she takes another sip, swallows it down like every other foul part of her life, and looks out onto the cafe courtyard where the pastel-colored passerby traverse at ease, unburdened by all but the obscene clothes on their backs, and Aurelia would never be _jealous_ of Orlesians but _Andraste, save me_ , she’s getting pretty close.

“Aure—”

“ _Do not ‘Aurelia’ me!_ ” she hisses, and if it weren’t for the toe of his boot pressed into her ankle beneath the table she might have abandoned all appearances right there in the cafe. He’s never so persistent and _Maker I could strangle him right now_.

If anything, it’s Fenris who might start the strangling. “First,” he growls, voice low as ever, because if they’re ever to truly cause a scene over tea in some velvet-curtained Orlesian establishment, he will make _certain_ he is not the one to start it, “I will ‘Aurelia’ you when I please. It’s your name, and it’s very beautiful, however adamant you are at insisting otherwise.” She slams the porcelain teacup back on the table, face hot with contempt, and he presses his foot further into her. “Second, you are a horrible liar, and I would never have mentioned Bethany if I didn’t know you’ve been fretting over her ever since we left Kirkwall. So don’t pretend you haven’t been thinking of her when I know you have.”

She rises in a hurricane of anger and impatience, forcing her chair out from behind her and staining their lace tablecloth yellow with spilled tea. _This conversation is over_ , she thinks; she doesn’t have to say it out loud because if anyone is experienced in ending a conversation simply by _leaving_ , it’s Fenris, and in several hurried paces—a trip made far more difficult in the Orleisan dress she’d convinced herself to wear in the morning—she’s put him far behind her, left him in the cafe while she escapes through the marketplace— _far too loud, far too busy —_and then through the brick and painted alleys out to the docks.

They’re elaborate, like everything else in Val Royeaux, nothing like the docks in Kirkwall and _Maker, I never thought I could miss the smell of dead fish and low tide so much_. She sinks down, down to the cobblestone beneath her feet and sits, breathing, breathing. _You are so far from home_ , she thinks first, and then, _you have no home_.

It’s not long before Fenris finds her. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t have to, he only pushes past a trio of Orlesians muttering something about “— _going to get her dress all dirty —_” to reach her side and sit on the cool stone with her. They watch the calm water pull in and out with an absence of ferocity found in the waves they knew far on the other side of the Waking Sea.

“I don’t know where she is,” Aurelia whispers finally, and he answers her with a warm hand rested atop her own, a small gesture, nothing more. “She’s all I have left, and I don’t even know where she is.”


	9. Horoscope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from OCtober 2018 day 29: "horoscope." Originally posted to [tumblr](https://bitchesofostwick.tumblr.com/post/179568572878/october-day-29-horoscope-aurelia-hawke-a-proper).

A proper, upstanding Orlesian citizen would never climb rooftops, but Aurelia and Fenris aren’t Orlesian; they’re hardly proper, far from upstanding, and quite frankly not citizens of anywhere, so when night falls upon Val Royeaux, they pull themselves up the vine-covered trellis running skyward along the walls of their hotel, lugging bedsheets and a feathered pillow and the elaborate embroidered duvet from their far-too-expensive-per-night bedroom along with them to spread out comfortably on the roof.

If they go early enough, the slate shingles are still warm from the summer sun, the duvet unnecessary until much later in the night when the sky darkens to a near-black blue and the air cools and the buzz of late-night revelers finally dwindles to a calm din, only the occaisional murmur of passerby still detectable among the soft lull of the Waking Sea, the faraway crickets of the surrounding grounds.

“I’m ready,” Aurelia whispers when they’re finally settled. She’s brought treats with her this time, little Orlesian chocolates filled with jams and toffee and caramels, and tiny lemon cookies frosted with a pale yellow cream. Fenris has brought his final bottle of wine taken from Danarius’ estate— _we can save it, you know,_ she’d told him,  _we don’t have to waste it tonight,_ to which he’d replied, in a way that would be uncharacteristically sweet were it not for his dry, annoyed tone,  _it’s not wasting if it’s shared with you, Hawke._  And so they lie, side by side sharing their pillow, excessively ornate duvet pulled up to their waists, nibbling chocolates and passing the bottle back and forth between them.

“You’re ready?” Fenris repeats,  _he’s mocking me_ , she knows, doesn’t have to look over to see the smirk on his face for affirmation.

She sticks her tongue out at him even though he’s not looking, pulls a chocolate from the box, and nods. “Show me…” She thinks back to all the constellations he’d shown her in the past nights. “Show me Draconis.”

He shakes his head no, she can feel him next to her on their pillow. “Draconis isn’t visible right now,” he says simply, “but if you look  _there_ —“

“What do you mean, it’s ‘not visible right now’?” she snaps, snatching another chocolate from the box. “You showed it to me last night!”

He intercepts the chocolate just before she pops it into her mouth and eats it himself,  _tutting_  quietly at her scandalized expression. “When I showed it to you last night,” he explains, licking the remaining chocolate from his fingers, “it was nearly sunrise. It’s probably not even midnight now, so you can’t see it.”

She’s too fast for him the next time he reaches into the box, grabbing his hand, forcing him to look her in the eye. “You’re making no fucking sense,” she tells him, glaring at him through a long sip of wine.

He can’t help but laugh at her, first a short, disbelieving chuckle, then a full-bellied laugh, the kind she so rarely heard from him, and she might smile at it if it weren’t for the sheer vexation growing within her. “Hawke,” he giggles— _giggles_ —green eyes bright, humored, and he pulls the wine from her hands and takes a sip himself. “Honestly, have you ever read a book in your life?”

She narrows her eyes at him now, face hot, exasperated. “More than you’ve read, that’s for sure,” she snaps; it’s a low blow but she’s never been above a dirty fight, and he takes it in stride.

“Quiet now, or I might just push you off this roof,” he says, biting into another chocolate, “and then the once mighty Champion of Kirkwall will reach the lowest of lows, true rock bottom, just a splatter of gore abandoned and forgotten on an unnamed Orlesian sidewalk—“

“ _Stop_  it!” she giggles; she finds it harder and harder to stay mad at him each day and the thought of her Fereldan body being reduced to sidewalk grime along the streets of Val Royeaux is enough to bring even her out of bad spirits.

“And,” he continues, pointing skyward again, still unable to shake the laughter from his words, “and if you look up  _there_ , you can see her constellation, the great Aurelia Hawke.”

She squints at the sky, nothing, and elbows him hard in the ribs. “I don’t see anything. Just a messy jumble of stars.”

“Exactly.”


End file.
